Chart entered : 26 October 1956
Chart peak : 13
Number of hits : 17
I'd prefer to give the label to Lonnie Donegan myself but most people regard this guy as the first British rocker and if Elvis is your Year Zero then his claim is indisputable. I've always found him deeply resistible - a professional Cockney who used rock and roll as a stepping stone to becoming a family entertainer and supposed "national treasure". Maybe it just reflects my own lack of affinity with our capital - ignoring football matches you could count my visits on one hand - and this is my chance to re-evaluate his music.
Tommy's a bit of a revisionist when it comes to details of his life story but it seems he was born Thomas Hicks in Bermondsey in December 1936. He was let off national service for either having cardiomyopathy or flat feet. He became a merchant seaman and spent hi shore leave playing with the Vipers Skiffle Group.. He supposedly switched to rock and roll hearing Buddy Holly rather than Elvis and came to the attention of Larry Parnes who may or may not have come up with the idea of changing his name.
"Rock With The Caveman" was Tommy's first single , recorded while he was still 19 and it was a song he co-wrote with fellow Viper Mike Pratt ( yes the same guy from Randall and Hopkirk Deceased ) and Parnes's friend Lionel Bart. Pratt and Bart were in effect The Steelmen although they were helped out by some jazz sessioneers notably Ronnie Scott on sax. You can immediately spot Bart's influence in the lyrics ; it's the first and probably the last hit to include the word "Archaeology" and almost certainly the first hit to feature a meta-lyric - "You know that lyric writers never lie / It's where they got the sayin "Starry Eye". Bart's involvement of course supports those who say Steele was only ever about theatre. Musically the song is stronger than I was expecting. It owes more to Haley than Elvis or Buddy with Scott's saxophone taking over halfway through the song ; it's startling entrance is almost a hip hop break. Steele's vocal is pretty rough but that doesn't really detract from its raucous charm.
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